Biden Takes Swipe at Campus Protesters, Snubbing Youth Support

Unlike Biden, former President Obama at least met with protesters.

(Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Yesterday, President Joe Biden addressed the college protests for the first time in days, not even bothering to lend his support to the most moderate of demands, that civilians be protected and Palestinians get their long-promised homeland. Instead he focused solely on antisemitism, citing the protests as an example thereof.

“On college campuses, Jewish students blocked, harassed, attacked while walking to class,” Biden said in his speech at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

It was Biden’s first public mention of the campus movement since last Thursday, when he gave a blistering speech on the demonstrations, striking a law-and-order tone reminiscent of Richard Nixon during widespread anti-Vietnam War protests. 

In the speech, Biden decried “chaos” and declared that “order must prevail.” He repeatedly condemned threats of violence, again failing to address the substantive demands  of the protesters, reducing the problem to antisemitism and threats to ‘national security.’

“There should be no place on any campus, no place in America for antisemitism or threats of violence against Jewish students,” Biden said. “People have the right to get an education, the right to get a degree, the right to walk across the campus safely without fear of being attacked.”

Biden brushed off criticism of his policies with regard to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war — the issue at the heart of the protests — as irrelevant.

“In moments like this, there are always those who rush in to score political points,” Biden said. “But this isn’t a moment for politics.”

If by ‘score political points’ Biden means against his campaign for reelection, that is hardly the focus of the student outcry. If anything, Biden is alienating his potential supporters in the 2024 presidential election through his policies regarding Israel — particularly the sale of American arms to Israel.

If by ‘politics’ the president means antisemitism or support for the Palestinian people is somehow a partisan issue, he is also off base. The protests are about policy, American policies, policies pursued by President Biden, whose administration has sole discretion on all kinds of things related to the Israel-Hamas war, from block weapons sales to holding Israel accountable for their use.

When at the end of his speech, a member of the press asked Biden if the protests had compelled him to reconsider any of his policies with respect to the region, Biden’s response was blunt.

“No,” the president said.

The irony of Biden’s speech is that it took place in the Roosevelt Room of the White House — the same place former President Obama once addressed protesters over an issue that was also fraught: police brutality. But instead of exclusively focusing on the instances of vandalism and unrest, Obama met with demonstrators to discuss criminal justice reform (even though he did almost nothing).

Police brutality  is obviously politically safer territory than Israel, but polling consistently shows police enjoy some of the highest public approval of any institution in the U.S., as well as overwhelming opposition to efforts to “defund the police.” Yet despite that, Obama at least engaged in dialogue with the protesters, inviting them to the Roosevelt Room. 

That’s not to say that Obama went along with all or even most of their demands, as any veteran of police reform efforts at the time can tell you. But he talked to them, at times even defended the general thrust of the movement, and offered some concessions, like the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, created in response to the protests against police brutality after the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

By contrast, President Biden hasn’t met with any of the college protesters and declined to even address them beyond castigating the unrest and buying into the purported “national security” dimensions of the protests. 

Biden’s tone deafness is starting to chafe members of his own party, including even some close to the administration. 

Biden’s speech addressing the campus outcry reportedly took place only after the urging of several Democratic allies and after former President Donald Trump had slammed Biden’s handling of the protests.

On Sunday, Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California and Biden defender, told Face the Nation that he thought Biden should visit some  college campuses.

“I think the president should and will get out there on campuses,” Khanna said, adding that “young people are upset at what’s going on in the Middle East.” 

It’s perhaps not surprising that Biden, an octogenarian so old he literally predates the state of Israel, is out of step with how youth see the world — a problem I’ve previously written about.

But if Biden is going to win a looming election against someone he’s repeatedly cast as a threat to democracy, you’d think he might be interested in addressing his youth problem.

The problem runs deeper than just Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war. Young people feel as though they fundamentally are not listened to — and they’re right. Last month, Biden signed into law a bill that could ban TikTok, in defiance of overwhelming youth opposition.

While Washington says the legislation was necessary to counter the malign influence of China, many young people feel as though the real reason was the officious grandpas in Congress not wanting them exposed to content critical of Israel which was available on TikTok. Denounced by some as a conspiracy theory, Senator Mitt Romney lent credence to the notion  on Friday.

“Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature,” Romney said during an interview alongside Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the McCain Institute. “If you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians, relative to other social media sites — it’s overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts.”

And it’s not just Romney who thinks this about TikTok. Back in March, a State Department source told me about a bizarre instance in which a high-ranking Israeli diplomat blamed American youth opposition to the Israel-Hamas war on TikTok’s algorithm, which he insisted was biased in favor of the Palestinians. My source was baffled at the inability of leaders to believe young people have the agency to hold their own beliefs and their arrogant assumption that they’re merely vessels for other people’s ideas.

There’s an oblique reference to the incident in a report by NPR, which states:

“According to last week's memo obtained by NPR, Israeli foreign ministry Deputy Director General Emmanuel Nahshon disagreed with the U.S. assessment that Israel's global reputation was damaged. He said public opinion polls found a "silent majority" of people in the U.S. and Europe continue to support Israel, and blamed TikTok's algorithm, which he claimed favors pro-Palestinian content, for turning young people against Israel.”

From Israel to the United States, gerontocracies don’t want to listen to young people.

— Edited by William M. Arkin